


Four times Killua died (and the one time he didn't)

by arienai



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:07:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21664942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arienai/pseuds/arienai
Summary: What if Gon and Killua's encounter with Pitou had gone differently?Companion fic toFour times Gon survived (and the one time he didn't).
Relationships: Gon Freecs/Killua Zoldyck
Comments: 42
Kudos: 88





	1. Redemption x and x Retribution

Killua arrives far too early. Tears still pour from Gon's face; his fingers still twist numbly in the fabric of his clothing; disbelief still wars with anguish in deafening reverberations throughout his mind in the silence of the dimly firelit stones beneath the mountainside chateau.

The electric flash of Killua's appearance bathes both combatants in blue-white light.

It's far easier than it should have been. Pitou is still healing. She has no time to refocus her nen to defense or offense. Killua's first blow takes her off-guard - stuns her to the spot with all the voltage he can muster in one strike and takes her right arm off with his hands-turned-claws.

She's so much stronger than him, but he has jammed his foot on the scales to tip the balance at the outset: in his mind, Killua hears Bisky, and her admonition not to fear powerful foes, but to take them at their weakest. And he's done it. He's done it. He's ripped fear out at the root and refused inaction. Pitou is dragging, crippled; in the furious exchange of blows that follows Killua exploits every square centimetre of the terrain that is her body to every advantage, just as he's been taught. He punishes her defense of killing blows with strikes for maximum effect: he targets tendons and slices nerves for damage and pain.

Not to slaughter the unsuspecting for money. Not because he's been told to; not because he dreads the consequences if he doesn't. Not because he has no other choice.

To vanquish a worthy opponent in defense of what he loves.

When the deed is done Killua returns to Gon through halls scorched by electrical fire and cracked by the pressure waves when his power had propelled him faster than sound. He collapses to his knees in front of Gon, exhausted. Panting. Smiling.

Gon is where Killua left him. He stares through Killua with opaque eyes.

"It's over," whispers Killua, at last bold enough to hold him. Gon had never been beyond his help; the strength was in Killua to protect him all along.

His battle with Pitou extinguished all of the candles and torches. They leave when Killua has recovered enough to shine once again, and his arclight chases away all but one corner of dark.

The morning after, Killua decides what he wants to do with his life. What kind of Hunter he wishes to be: the kind who hunts mens' souls, and sets them on a better path. Mercenaries, killers, criminals; hitmen and thieves. Everyone from whom the people have turned and has in turn turned from them. He pools resources from treasure, from prize fighting, seized by authorities or donated from those he's helped, and he gives them all a way out. Free education, training in trades, positions in the military, as security, as physical trainers, as chemists, as medics, to make use of their skills. He works with Hunter Association Chairman Leorio Palladknight to lobby all governments to ban deathmatches in all arena fighting. To crack down on the underworld with better-paid, better-equipped police, while at the same time draining their pool of recruits through free medical care and scholarships to disadvantaged youth.

Those hardened in their ways Killua confronts directly. Tells of his own past and how he found his way off of it through conviction, and the love a true friend. At times, this is all that's necessary: his word as a Zoldyck that it is possible, and better, to live in the light. At others, they come to blows.

The sole surviving shadow festers in the pit of Gon's heart. And grows. Grows, and grows, with the deaths of every evil-doer Killua cannot save. Gon saves them, in his own way. He asks them why they weep for their comrades, for themselves, when if they'd just shown that compassion for anyone else, it would never have come to this. And then he sets them free, in the way that Killua cannot. Will not.

As the Nostrade family boss, most of his subordinates can be talked down, but Kurapika won't be. Not yet. He's in too much pain, Killua tells Gon. Be patient. He needs time to heal. Everything gets better, easier with time. 

"I'll talk to him," says Gon, and Killua nods.

Gon returns ten minutes later to tell him that Kurapika swallowed a bullet.

Leorio berates an unmoved Gon for letting things get this far, and Knuckle and Shoot and even Palm will no longer speak to him. Morel takes Killua aside, pours him five shots of throat-scorching liquor, and tells him Gon is his problem now. That he can no longer be reasoned with. 

Which is ridiculous, of course. Killua saved Gon years ago. He might be in a dark place now, but there's hope. There's always hope.

It ends on Kukuroo Mountain.

"You knew this had to be done," says Gon, to Killua, who can't still the violent trembling in his limbs or blink away the tears from his prised-wide eyes at the sight of his mother and father's bodies. Together, torsos rent in charred circles by a fist of energy that had punched through both. His father had clearly tried to shield his mother while she landed the single shallow blow that bleeds from Gon's cheek. "After what they did to you."

Killua takes one silent half-step backward when Gon tosses Illumi's headless corpse in his direction. "You should have done it yourself." 

"A-Allu, ka," he mumbles, meaninglessly, a question to which he knows the answer: everyone, every Zoldyck, every guard, every butler, on this mountain is dead.

They are at the heights of their power and the fight that follows destroys the estate down to its foundations; strews the stone itself in every direction. The sky turns black for miles in every direction, and there is a lightning storm that hasn't been seen in generations, intertwined with flashes of molten orange fire. They've trained together, grown together, lived together: they are evenly matched and it rages for hours.

When it comes to the finishing blow, Killua hesitates.

Gon does not.

He buries Killua beside his sister. When Gon leaves, the guard dogs rise and follow obediently behind.


	2. Codependence x and x Intimacy

Killua arrives too early. Flashes of red rage have begun to filter through the grey of grief, guilt, and despair in the thoughts into which Gon is sinking, but they have yet to darken into the black in which he would have drowned. This is his fault, it isn't it's hers, it is, it isn't, help, it _is_ , it isn't _she did this_ , someone help, it is he did this he is weak too weak, she did she did how _could_ she how _dare_ she, someone anyone _please_ \--

Pitou has begun to flex her freshly healed forearm. The blinding flash of Killua's arrival betrays him: light travels faster than even he can move, down the tunnel ahead of him and into her eyes and through the nerve into her brain, which in turn sparks down her spine into her limbs. She sidesteps the touch meant to stun her; she captures the claws meant to dismember her.

She wrenches Killua's arm from its own socket as she hurls him into the wall. It's dislocated, torn, hanging by muscle and frayed ligament - the impact knocks the air from Killua's lungs and the sense from his skull. His defense is raw instinct. Without the newfound skill to bypass rational thought with stimulus he would have perished to her second to attack. Even so, he clings to life by millimeters of movement: a fingernails' breadth ahead of blows that would have crushed his ribcage, a breath backward of her own claws as they swipe with the intent to rip open his trachea.

On open ground, perhaps, Killua could have made a fight of it. Could have used the foliage, the shadows, the terrain, the height of the trees. Could have fled the way his brother bade him. Here in this stone box there is no hope. This will be his coffin. This battle has one ending. In his mind, Bisky's admonition: that knowing this, he will leave Gon to die. 

Cold sweat trickles down the small of his back. He feels faint from blood loss already. He sees her next attack coming: Pitou's claws are aimed for his heart.

Killua dismisses the nen that gives him speed. 

He moves, quickly, but not quickly enough. The pain when her hand plunges through his chest, just below his left shoulder, is the worst he's ever felt. He whimpers softly - something he hasn't done since he was six years old.

Then Killua digs his claws into the meat of Pitou's forearm. His nails scrape bone. She tries to yank it backwards; her wrist is caught between his ribs, and in what Killua intends to be his deathgrip.

"Gon, _run_ ," Killua hisses, in what should have been a shout; there's too much blood in his mouth. It will have to be enough. The rest of his strength he pours with all of his remaining nen into electricity: doubtless it won't be enough to kill her - it just might be enough to hold her here long enough for Gon to escape.

Killua does not know that this is the one thing Gon would never do.

Killua cannot see into Gon's mind, where a silver-haired man he has adored from childhood is telling him to flee, to save himself. The tension, the palpable waves of nen, his strong and bright and Pitou's baleful dark. The stink of blood in the air. In this new haze of blue and black and silver, this new desperate command from the lips of his loved one, he sees one thing.

Redemption.

It doesn't matter if Gon dies here. Nothing does. There needn't be anything beyond this moment. So long as he saves Killua.

Gon's attack does not take Pitou off-guard. She is a wary enough fighter to have always considered the possibility of his interference before she was finished with the other boy. She knows she'll break free of Killua's grip before long; his strength is fading. This is, in fact, why she has kept her other arm free, when she could have used it to finish Killua off while their bodies were locked together, seconds ago.

The strength of Gon's attack, however, does. She's gauged his power before, seen him concentrate it and knows she'll be able to deflect it with her own. 

"First comes _rock_."

A ball of burning orange nen catches her in the stomach; batters her free of Killua, arm drenched in Killua's blood. She skids across the floor on all fours. 

The attack would have ripped a lesser opponent in half.

"Second comes _paper_."

The fast-flung swath of energy shakes the chateau down to its foundations; Pitou bounds over it, along the ceiling, and pounces to pin Gon to the floor. His muscles ripple impossibly for a child so young; his sheer physical strength, combined with his head-focused ken, prevent her from taking his head or his throat or his heart or his eyes.

Until the other boy hurls himself at her, at least. Killua is reduced to the tricks of his childhood: his good arm whips out snakelike and leaves a bloody slash across her face. 

Gon slams both feet into her stomach, already black and blue from his first strike.

He's won free; Pitou searches for him; the room crawls with scores of half-focused images of Killua.

It takes her mere moments with closed eyes to find the real one from the sound of dripping blood.

Her en is raised in defense: she expects in those moments for Gon to strike her. She does not expect to open them to find the two boys standing together, power swirling around Gon in flaming waves, concentrated on a point below the silver-haired boy's outstretched hand, as the skin of his palm blisters and chars.

"Rock..."

They are blocking the only exit with their bodies.

"Paper..."

There is no other escape from this small stone room. 

"SCISSORS."

Gon expects her to dodge. Killua expects her to lunge. And Killua is guiding; Killua pushes Gon's power toward her; she goes low, not high; Killua corrects the path; the room reeks of his burning flesh and he elbows Gon out of the way after Gon releases the ball.

The impact breaks Pitou's back and most of her ribs. It cracks her jaw open at the hinge and boils the lenses of her eyes in their sockets. It bursts all six of their eardrums; it flings all three of them wide: Gon across the room, Pitou into the wall, Killua into the doorframe.

Pitou is dying. Her body is beyond repair. Strings of nen born of her own devotion for her king and all he represents raise her to skitter like a smashed puppet on mangled limbs to where Killua wallows in the fading throes of consciousness.

Gon catches her by the ankle.

She reels a fist back in an attempt to crush his skull with it.

Killua catches her wrist.

They cling to her while she lashes and writhes; they punch and kick and scratch and bite. They have no right to win this fight; yet, neither will give up until the other is sure to survive it. Their nen is exhausted and so are they - they hold on as fiercely as they can until both of them are a patchwork of cuts and bruises, until both of them are sobbing from hurt and exhaustion, until there's skin between all of Killua's teeth and under all of Gon's fingernails, until Gon finally manages to crack her skull open with one good kick, and he stands and stomps on it until her brains squish out in all directions under his boot.

Pitou doesn't rise again. 

"Go," repeats Killua, "Leave me. Get help."

Gon slaps him.

Gon uses strips of his shirt to staunch Killua's chest wound as best he can. Grits his teeth. Heaves Killua's good arm up over his shoulder and hauls him out.

It takes hours. Gon has to drag him. Then carry him. "Killua?" he repeats, throughout the night, "Say my name."

"Gon," Killua mumbles, slurs, whispers. "Gon."

"Killua." Gon smiles every time he's answered.

Without Palm's sight Gon and Killua would have died in the woods together. Gon does not rest and walks to the point of collapse; only an immediate transfusion on the ride to the hospital saves Killua, and even then it's a near thing. Killua is comatose for a week. 

Gon stays at his side night and day. Is there when he opens his eyes. Beams brighter than the fluorescent bulbs, embraces him, and tells him that Kite is alive.

In the days to come Bisky will berate them in their shared hospital room for not having learned a single healing skill; they'll both laugh, sheepishly.

They limp down to the election hall together.

Killua releases Gon when they spot Ging in the crowd so that Gon can run to him; Gon picks Killua up instead and carries him to his father while Killua struggles to hide his flushed face, heedless of the gasps at how fast he's recovered. Gon introduces Killua before he introduces himself, Ging tells him off for bringing a stranger along, and not a soul in the room moves to stop Leorio from decking Ging with a fist of nen through the floor.

"That kid nearly died protecting your son, you goddamn deadbeat!"

"Hey Ging, does the money your kid makes fighting for the Association get taken out of your child support payments?"

"Hah! Gon's wearing the same shoes he wore to the Hunter Exam two years ago - Ging Freecs hasn't paid that kid a fucking dime and everybody and their dog knows it!"

"Killua is my best friend in the whole world," says Gon, over Ging's splayed form, "We'll be together forever."

"A Zoldyck, huh. Nice to meet you, kid." Ging grunts, rises, and straightens his hat. "Gon, give me a minute, would you? Your friend is a little too roughed up to be here for the next little while."

They leave the hall to the sounds of a burgeoning rumble; Gon is amazed at how well everyone seems to know his dad. Ging promises to finish their introductions when he's done here. 

Atop the World Tree, Ging makes good on it.

Gon has carried Killua on his back the whole way; Ging tosses him a half-eaten apple as a reward; Killua gives the two of them some privacy on the other side of the bird's nest and is half asleep when Gon informs his father that Killua is his future husband. Ging responds that, if that's the case, he needs Killua's permission to travel to the Dark Continent - standing in awe of his father, Gon has already agreed to go. 

But all people have their own paths, their own goals, their own desires, Ging says, and is suspicious of Gon's assertion that Killua's is simply to follow him. Killua, still reeling at having been addressed at all, blurts out against his better judgement that he has a sister, who he needs to rescue, from his family and from herself and why.

"In that case." Ging strokes his chin. "You should come with us to the Dark Continent."

He explains the Calamities to Killua. That if there is a cure for his sister, it'll be found there.

Gon never asks why Killua hasn't told him about her before.

Instead, they hatch a plan. It will take many months to prepare for the journey; in the interim they find a country that will let them marry at 14, with their parents' permission. Mito refuses, of course: knowing he won't be denied she tells Gon that first he has to have a house, pay his taxes, and take out a life insurance policy to take care of Killua if anything should ever happen. Gon does the first the next day, with his cut from the Chimera Ant war. He does the third shortly after looking up what life insurance is on the internet. The second takes weeks, and a tearful phone call to Leorio, to wade through the mess of his prize fight earnings, his auction sales, his regular pay, his tax-free deployment pay, what constitutes his nation and state of residence, his brand new property and land transfer taxes, his-- Gon is curled up in a ball beside the coffee table by the time Killua and Leorio and a consummately professional CPA accustomed to dealing with Hunters have found a solution.

"Sell your house, buy a new one on Whale Island," says the CPA. "Whale Island residents don't pay taxes until they turn 15."

Gon groans for a minute straight.

Leorio checks Killua over, privately. His chest and left shoulder are healing well; his right hand likely never will. The force of Gon's attack burned it to the bone. When the bandages at last come off Killua tries to hide it: in pockets, with gloves. Until Gon kisses it, and tells him he wants to see it, always. That it reminds him of what they are to each other.

The Zoldycks will take more convincing. When Gon and Killua show up at the base of the mountain, their spies have already told them why. Gon is for the first time received like an honoured guest. Gon looks Kikyou in the face while he drinks the poisoned tea she offers him. Asks her if she'll provide the sake at their wedding, too, and if it will taste as delicious. His natural abilities as an Enhancer are ten-fold what they were when he last set foot here; Gon has in months acquired immunities that took Killua years. Tears roll down her face when she embraces him as her future son-in-law.

Gon blocks every blow in a friendly sparring match with Silva. Endures a night of every attempt Milluki and the butlers can make on his life. For his part, Zeno simply lays a hand over Gon's heart in silence for a time, then nods. "This is a mere formality, isn't it," he says, and Gon seems to understand, though neither ever explains. "Gon Zoldyck."

Illumi's objections are ignored.

While his family is focused on Gon, Killua blackmails Milluki with his involvement in the Greed Island auction to convince him to hack open the doors to Alluka's bedroom. Then he knocks Milluki out, restrains him, and slinks through the lower level of their estate, unnoticed as any shadow. On the way out he shuts the doors behind him; Milluki sulking his room for hours is an unremarkable occurrence; Killua, Gon, and Alluka, are a full day gone before anyone notices their absence.

Kikyou weeps again over what an exemplary infiltrator her son has become. Silva lays a hand on her shoulder - he has decades left of his own prime. Let Killua have his youth. When he returns to the family, he and Gon will be as they two were, once.

The only attendee who cries harder than Kikyou at the wedding itself is Leorio, standing in for Ging beside Mito, who hands him her handkerchief. It's the first time Mito has left Whale Island in decades; she is as enraptured as Alluka by the city lights and white sand beaches. Alluka offers to heal Killua's hand, but he declines - he only asks her to numb the pain. Kurapika shows up two hours into the reception with bags under his eyes, in a crumpled suit jacket that reeks like gunpowder; he shakes hands with Killua and hugs Gon to the point of awkwardness before downing three-quarters of a bottle of bourbon and passing out on Leorio's shoulder.

A mile beyond the outer perimeter of security, watching the very same sunset, Hisoka proposes to Illumi.

Ging's congratulatory postcard arrives two months later, along with a scrawled note to hurry their asses up - departure preparations are almost finished.

Gon, Killua, Alluka, Kurapika, Leorio, and Ging board the Black Whale together. Ging disappears for the rest of the voyage with a blond Hunter he never introduces. After some digging, Killua recognizes his name from one of their wedding gifts: a pair of new green boots two sizes larger but otherwise identical to the ones Gon's feet have torn open at the seams. Leorio leaves for the medical bay; Kurapika for his bodyguard duties. When Kurapika announces the presence of nen beasts on the PA, Killua has Alluka dispel them all.

The rest of the voyage passes very quietly. Rumours say the weekly balls held by the King of Kakin are curiously subdued.

The Dark Continent is everything they expected it to be. Ferocious man-eaters lie in wait everywhere; nen as richly black as the Chimera Ants' rolls off all of them in waves. The first team to land is slain within minutes of making shore. Of Ging's team, only he and his sons survive. At base camp Leorio and Cheadle work 20-hour shifts staving off lethal ailments that have no name. Even so, they press onward. Find objects of such awe, wonder, and promise that no one questions the cost.

After six months they find the Ais, and after one last pat on the head and kiss on the cheek from Killua, Nanika returns to her people. Alluka returns to the New Continent. 

Killua suggests they go with her, but Gon and Ging have already found a new valley to explore. Then a new island. Then a river that turns every metal it touches into rare earth elements. A volcano that produces coals that never stop burning. 

After two years, five percent of the original expedition remains. 

After three, one percent does, and they've mapped the entire shoreline of the eastern half up to fifty miles inland. At last they come across the grassy wetlands said to grow herbs that can produce any chemical known to man. The last expedition here were killed to a man by an insect-borne disease that caused terrible fevers. It takes longer than they expected to find the herb: even holding it a centimetre from their skin, Gon and Killua's en runs out hours before they make it back to safety, and they rely on their reflexes and awareness alone to ward off swarms of the tiny, buzzing creatures. When they show up unharmed even Ging seems relieved.

It's Gon who notices the bite on the back of Killua's right hand later that night.

He bolts back to base camp in blind panic, roughly shakes Leorio awake, begs him to use every antibiotic and every antiviral at his disposal. Killua is already delirious; by morning, he is non-responsive. In the end Leorio has to use nen to keep the parasite from entering Killua's brain.

The eggs, though, even in their fetal state, can use zetsu. Leorio has never seen anything like it - modern medicine has never seen anything like it. Killua will require nen surgery every time they hatch, and there could be thousands of them. Tens of thousands. 

Leorio and the other Medical Hunters release Killua from quarantine after they determine he's not contagious. Their hypothesis is that he is intended as a vector for the insects as they were to him, not as a symptomatic carrier for direct transmission to other humans. 

They take the next ship home. Ging continues adventuring for another year.

When they rise, Killua's fevers come on swiftly and without warning. The swelling of his joints leaves him in agony. The weakness when they pass leaves him bedridden for days. 

At times, Killua is as if he'd never been sick. He follows Gon on jobs for the Association; nothing too strenuous, as they never know when he'll be incapacitated. It hurts, but it is nothing he can't live with. 

Slowly, over time, Killua takes longer and longer to recover after each bout. Gon feels his nen weaken along with his body. Before long all they can handle are E-rank contracts together. More often than not Gon works alone. After returning home from one finds that Mito and Alluka have moved in with Killua and doesn't want to ask why.

A letter arrives from Ging the next spring that he has finished his resupply and is ready to explore the west. Gon agrees to join him. To Killua, he swears he'll find the cure. 

Killua tells him he knows he will.

Killua dies of fever at the age of nineteen. With his sister, mother, and mother-in-law at his side. 

The backlash from breaking his unconscious nen contract stops Gon's heart instantly. The one he made in the basement of the chateau, in return for strength so long as Killua survived. Thousands of miles from civilization, his body is never found.


	3. Justice x and x Mercy

Killua moves too late. 

Gon's rage has come to its logical conclusion and the battle has left the chateau. It is about to come to an end, of a kind, when Killua arrives, following the explosions of terrible power throughout the forest. Killua watches Gon land the blow that crushes the skull of Pitou's limp form, lying prostrate beneath him.

Killua watches blue blood drip from Gon's knuckles. Disbelief roots him to the spot a millisecond too long. 

So that when Gon, distracted, turns to him and Pitou rises on nen strings behind the other boy, Killua's desperate leap does not push them clear.

Instead of Gon's right arm, Pitou's claws slice through Killua's own torso. She severs Killua's spine at the waist as cleanly as she did Kite's at the neck. His muscle parts like paper; her nails catch on his intestines, and she drags them with her for the rest of the leap, a viscous crimson tether that stretches out yards beyond the halves of Killua's body.

Killua feels it. Knows from the moment his skin is pierced that he is dead and it is only a matter of time until his mind catches up to the fact. There is no help anyone in the world could possibly offer him now. And in that moment, he sees the tears in Gon's eyes, before he falls. 

"It doesn't hurt," he lies.

Killua is already sightless by the time he hits the ground. None of the blood it pumps across the grass returns to his heart; there's not enough pressure to force oxygen into the optic nerve. His breaths are the quiet gurgles of a drowning man just before he goes under. The last thing he hears are Gon's heavy footsteps, before those are lost to the grey buzz of his suffocating brain. It struggles to process the impact of two bodies slamming into the earth. Of the cataclysmic explosion that follows.

 _Did I help you,_ Killua wonders.

The last thing Killua feels are strong, heavy arms wrapped around him.

When Meleoron and Knuckle ask about Gon and Killua, Palm tells them that their fight is over. That there's no need to worry about the boys; they will fetch them when their own battle is done.

After, when the spell is broken, the last of the Royal Guards are dead, and the King sits dying with his final opponent, hundreds of yards beneath the earth, Palm finds Knov and asks for his help out of earshot of Morel and his students. They'll know soon enough. The don't need to see.

Master and student gently pry Gon's nen-withered hands from around Killua's shoulders. Killua's chest and head go in one bag; his legs and pelvis were fused to Pitou's body by the force of Gon's nen after he'd rammed them through her torso. The former will go back to his family, at least. What was the rest of Killua and Pitou is so unrecognizable as not to matter. Still, they collect it all. 

Bereft of Killua's cry to hold him back from giving everything he had left in one blow, without medical invention to force the air into his lungs, Gon was smothered by his own nen. Even after death, it continues to age him into a wizened grey-brown, century-old corpse on a child's frame. 

"There are enough Hunters who could identify him," Palm suggests, "His family doesn't need to see this."

"Ging does," Knov replies.

They return to the hospital with Gon and Killua and heavy hearts, prepared to tell the rest of the invasion team what has become of its youngest members.

They find all of them in Shoot's room, screens open on every device they own, transfixed by the evening news.

At first, Palm and Knov don't understand: all there is to see is the usual cycle of disinformation. The Ants are a terrorist conspiracy; the terrorists bombed the East Gorteau palace in an assassination attempt, successful or unsuccessful, depending on the channel. Mixed casualty reports from the mandatory celebration. Political speculation regarding the fallout. Speculation regarding the Association's involvement.

There are some images of the scene. Real images. Some on-screen experts decry them as deep fakes, others do not. The palace in ruins. The thronging, immobilized crowds. The telltale bloom of a Poor Man's Rose cloud. Unconscious soldiers draped over tanks. Dead chimera ants, without pattern or uniform.

There is a single image the experts do not debate. Gon is still recognizable in it: decay has crept up his oversized limbs, but his face has reverted to that of a child. Killua's empty eyes are still wide open. Their embrace is the center of focus. Out of focus, beyond them, Pitou's charred form appears to be corpse of another child; beyond that, the ruins of the forest might as well have been shelled by heavy ordnance.

Leorio and Kurapika see it that first evening. In his dorm room Leorio has the news on in the background to use the aimless hum of idle chatter as a study aid. The word Hunter catches his attention, and he takes a break to boil water for cup ramen and scrolls through QNet while it cools. The forums have utterly ignited: 600 comments since he last visited an hour ago, and counting.

[Is that the rookie kid who passed the Hunter Exam last year?]

[The 13-year-old who beat up 1300 nobodies? Yep. Wasn't a rookie tho.]

[pretty sure he was a rookie p much only rookies passed last year]

[That was the year before last moron]

[Yeah and he did pass the year before last moron]

[Are we talking about the same kid]

[THAT'S GON FUKCING FREECS]

[holy shit]

[does ging go to qnet? does anybody have ging's email? anybody???]

[DOES GING WATCH THE NEWS]

Leorio drops a comment asking what everyone is talking about. Adds that they are friends of his. Someone tells him to scroll back a few threads. Another tells him not to. Someone else reposts an image.

Leorio never eats his ramen.

Kurapika is shown the image by a subordinate holding a tablet during his nightly brief. He does not react. He says, "I see," and, "thank you," when he is told that it has been analyzed and to the best of their information is not fake. He says nothing when the subordinate moves on to the other photographs. He finishes the brief. Attempts to open the glass door to his office for the better part of a minute before his bodyguard does it for him. Has someone else drive him home. 

Kurapika answers Leorio's phone call for the first time in months.

Zushi sees it the next morning. He has been up training with Wing since dawn, and Wing turns on the news while they eat breakfast. When the anchor warns for graphic imagery, Wing asks Zushi if he's ready to see what war looks like. Wing knows Zushi has already seen violence at the arena, between two competitors, but this can be very different. Zushi says he is; says Gon and Killua are already fighting, and he is going to keep up with them.

Wing takes him at his word and sets the remote down. 

Mito doesn't see it until a week later. Whale Island doesn't get any of the 24-hour news networks; the local channel has no international reporters, and can't afford to buy access to any professional photographs or recordings, let alone any politically charged leaks. For days she hears of "unrest" and "terrorism" in East Gorteau, and understands neither of these things. She doesn't even know Gon was there: his letters will arrive in the weeks to come.

By the time she sees it, she already knows. As Gon's legal guardian, the Hunter Association informs her of his death the day after it happens. She cries, profoundly and deeply, but it doesn't come as a shock. It has been in the back of her mind since the day he left. She asks to see it, heedless of the warnings of her mother and friends. The image on the local news channel is censored, out of respect. Mito recognizes Gon's clothing and Killua's silver hair.

The Zoldycks don't need to be told. Zeno appears at the hospital the same night it happens, within an hour of Palm and Knov's return, to ask for his grandson's body. 

After the funeral, Milluki doesn't leave his room for days. Illumi doesn't return for weeks. Silva and Kikyou don't speak to one another for months. Zeno tells Alluka, and pays three fingernails for it. He asks nothing in return.

Killua's identity has been scrubbed from all databases, the same as any Zoldyck; it takes an enterprising, anonymous hacker less than two hours to match a render of Gon's face to his Hunter licence. By morning the sale of that information has gone through to NCC, the largest of the 24-hour news conglomerates. They take the payout from the Association not to air it. As do CBA, and Ox.

By noon it has leaked online.

Not that it matters. The image is enough: hundreds of people have met Gon and Killua on their travels, and scores knew exactly who they were. The race gates have sprung open and they are hounded ravenously by reporters.

The narrative changes overnight from innocent slain bystanders to combatants, and conspiracies regarding their affiliations erupt from every corner. Articles feature video and still images of their fights at Heaven's Arena; whether staged as victim or aggressor depends on the outlet's political leaning. Their ages make personal culpability a hard sell, no matter how much the editor despises the Association or Hunters themselves. Some make a valiant effort: Killua's family has ties to the underworld, Gon's father is a notorious grave robber of cultural artifacts, they attended black market auctions of illicit goods, they fought in prize fights to the death that would have obliterated a normal opponent. Clearly, these were no innocents.

In the end the image speaks for itself. Two children clinging to one another in death requires no explanation. 

It becomes iconic of Chimera Ant Incident. It galvanizes hardened professional investigators; it inspires a thousand amateurs and hobby hackers to worm their way toward the truth and the seemingly impenetrable secrecy of the operation begins to unravel. That the Association was hired as private contractors by the V5 itself; that they subcontracted to professional hitmen; that the words "by any means necessary" were used. Aspirants and those in related trades had always been aware that the Hunter Exam had no age limit, that those with special abilities might be used for a potentially lethal mission regardless of whether or not they were a minor; now, it is common knowledge.

Those with knowledge of nen are even more aghast. While his specific injuries might be inexplicable to those without, to them, it is obvious what Gon has done to himself. A pair of Kakin bodyguards glance at one another over their patron's shoulders with both eyebrows raised: 

_Brutal._

_Not even a shinobi would do that._

_Maybe nobody taught him not to._

_To be that strong, somebody's trained him._

A mafia assassin laughs when he's apprehended by Mizai and his team, before their fight ensues: "Hunters, huh. Better show me your IDs. I don't want to kill anybody who's not old enough to drink."

Nobunaga tells Phinks that they should have kept those two locked up until they joined the Troupe, even if they had to break all of their bones and beat them bloody to do it. Phinks agrees.

Chrollo takes Kalluto aside to teach him everything he knows about nen contracts. Tells him that he is one of the legs of the Spider now: if his family, his government, or anyone asks him to do something he doesn't want to do, the Troupe will shelter him.

The Chairman Election that follows is not a friendly debate. 

The media is lined up around the block. All factions are out for blood. The former Chairman's image is a blunt instrument wielded by all sides for clout. Some argue that it is his fault "those kids" are dead; they are rebutted by those who know the Chairman forbade them from the mission; no, not the mission, only entering the NGL so it wasn't an operational failure to take them along, they were strong enough to be there, it was a tactical error to leave them alone, and that's on the Hunters on the ground, not the Chairman. And so on. For hours. Ging's preemptive maneuver to game the rules in his favour backfires and now he is locked in a room with six hundred colleagues who would just as well see him dead. 

"I didn't teach him nen," says Ging, in his defense.

"No you clearly fucking _didn't_ ," says someone in the crowd, and Ging is nearly mobbed on the spot.

Pariston calms the crowd by asking them not to disrespect Gon's memory. 

Hunter Exam reform is tabled: Mizai submits raising the age of eligibility to 18, Ging objects, stating that this wastes the time of those with valuable talents. Cheadle asks him, as evenly as she can, how much of Gon's time taking the Exam at 12 has wasted.

Pariston suggests raising it to 15.

Mizai tables background checks to deny licenses to those with criminal records. Pariston asks if this means they would reject those Hunters who've trespassed at youths, or broken laws in countries that consider littering or reproductive health care a felony. Mizai insists that these would be for serious offenses only, like murder - Pariston cuts him off to point out that his last example is considered such in some jurisdictions. Rather, shouldn't they consider Hunters innocent until proven guilty, and revoke licenses of those who commit serious crimes?

Cheadle argues for full, public disclosure of all contracts from governmental agencies. Kanzai points out, bluntly, that that would kill all such contracts and the Association would cease to exist as they know it. 

Pariston suggests eventual disclosure, as the information becomes declassified. For missions that remain secret, a hard deadline of six months to a year would be set in order to avoid leaking operationally relevant information.

"Ethical transparency need not sacrifice confidentiality," he says with a radiant smile, and does not answer Cheadle's hushed inquiry as to what in the world that _means_.

Pariston wins by a landslide.

He and Ging depart for the Dark Continent in the months that follow.

They leave behind them an organization with a minimum age of 15. Under protest, Heaven's Arena follows suit, banning minors from deathmatches. Within the year, the V6 raises the legal age of conscription in all member states to 15, and issues a memorandum that they will not work with any contractors that employ child soldiers. The following year a biopic is released on Gon's life, as penned by an investigative journalist moved by his story, six months after which the autonomous region of Whale Island finally becomes a signatory to the to the V6's Declaration on the Rights of Children, with legal protections for minors, an age of consent, and a single enforcement officer attached to the mainland.


	4. Grief x and x Loss

Killua arrives too late. Gon is never distracted by his presence; never hears his plea for restraint. When Pitou's nen raises her corpse to strike him, Gon seizes it and rips it in half. Commits utterly to its destruction as his final act.

Killua does arrive in time to see Gon's tears. To hear his assurances that it doesn't hurt; that everything is alright now; that he has been redeemed. Gon loses consciousness seconds later. 

Even if Killua had the strength left to move both of them at lightning speed to aid it wouldn't have mattered. Gon's breath sputters, rattles, and stills against Killua's shoulder less than a minute into his run. Killua touches the side of Gon's throat and feels his pulse fade swiftly; Killua's mouth tastes like salt.

Killua knows death. He doesn't try to deny it. He doesn't invent ways that Gon could still somehow, against all odds, survive. He doesn't tell himself that this isn't real. That everything will be okay.

He stumbles through the watery blur the forest has become with Gon on his back for hours. His sniffles grow into sobs, rise into wails, become screams that echo meaninglessly around him until his voice is hoarse. His face is soaked with tears and snot that he can't wipe away without releasing Gon's arms. They drip down to stain the front of his shirt.

When Palm and Ikalgo come for him in their truck, Killua is seated at the side of the road with a long-haired corpse that only faintly resembles his best friend cradled in his arms. His face is raw red and his eyes are bloodshot to the corners.

He doesn't answer any of their questions, nor respond to their attempts to console him. He doesn't react to their embraces, nor those of the other Hunters in the invasion party. He does start to cry again, briefly, when Knuckle does.

He seems the least upset when curled up in a chair beside Shoot's hospital room, so the adults leave Killua there while they attend to the fallout of the battle. 

Killua stirs when a robed shadow blocks the light above him. The face is Gon's face, but older. No - no, it isn't, Killua has seen Gon's face when he was grown and it is strikingly different from this man's. 

"Are you going to the election?" the man asks.

"I left him to die," Killua responds solemnly, "I'm sorry."

"I'm not the one you need to apologize to," says the man. Touches his head, once, hesitantly, and walks away.

Killua never sees him again. 

The adults talk about things he doesn't want to understand. They argue in hushed tones in his periphery. Something has happened to the chairman. They want him to go somewhere. He doesn't get up, so they don't make him. Ikalgo sits beside him for hours. Gives him a chocolate robot, which sits there too. Leorio stops by, doing a terrible job of hiding the fact that he'd recently been crying, and kneels to ask him a few questions he doesn't answer. Leaves the room to berate someone over the fact that Killua hasn't eaten in days.

Leorio makes him drink something sweet. It isn't terrible.

That night Illumi arrives. Shoot is fast asleep; Illumi eyes him, and Killua tells Illumi, flatly, that he will kill him or die trying if he lays a hand on him.

"I'm not here for that." Illumi flashes him his horrible, dead-eyed smile. "I'm here to take you home, Kil."

"I can't go home," Killua mumbles, "I broke my promise to Dad."

"Father will forgive you. Killua, come home."

His father will never let him see Alluka now. Killua has lost them both. His conviction to give up his old life is all he has left.

"It was a nice dream while it lasted, I'm sure. You made a friend. He died, like everyone you will meet who isn't--"

Illumi has no knowledge of Killua's new powers. He has no way of knowing that his 13-year-old brother is faster than him, let alone can turn his nen into electricity. He never sees Killua leave the chair, only the black-and-white afterimages of a lightning strike left behind by his path.

Killua kicks his older brother out of an eleventh story window.

It would have been the end of Illumi had he not been caught by soft, elastic strands nen, and lowered gently into Hisoka's arms. They look for Killua together, but find him vanished.

Killua runs away. Out of the hospital, out of the city, out of the country. 

He has no resources, no supplies, no money. There are only two ways he knows how to get them: the first, he swears on his own life he will never do again, the second is fighting in Heaven's Arena. 

Once again, he spams a single neck chop to cruise to the 150th floor. Killua is much, much stronger now; he finishes the entire fight against his 150th floor opponent without nen, with nothing more than the arm of Ikalgo's chocolate robot in his stomach for the past week. He faints in the stands. A stranger offers him a rice ball and Alligade; these are enough to propel him back to the 200th floor and a room of his own.

Killua ignores Wing and Zushi's phone calls. He keeps the door locked and doesn't open it when they knock. He attracts attention, first as the youngest fighter on the 200th floor, then as the youngest floor master. 

He uses electricity for the first time since he arrived to win the title. Everyone wants to know if he'll challenge the battle for the top. Everyone wants to try their hand at him. Nine out of ten of his challengers want deathmatches; everyone on these floors has nothing left to lose - they are here to live the only way they can.

Killua is here because he doesn't know what else to do. Between bouts, he trains. when he can't train, he sleeps. When he can't sleep, he stares at the television, seeing nothing.

The two-hundredth-and-ninety-ninth time he washes blood off his hands, he begins to admit to himself what he is really doing here. What this really is. What it amounts to. Following the parade of body bags that departs from the arena in the wake of Hisoka and Chrollo's match, Killua can no longer deny it.

He's turned to what he's been bred for. Killing. Most of his opponents stand no real chance against him. Those who do, he more often than not defeats using the one thing they lack: his upbringing. That he does not react to poison, or pain; that he has every fatal blow as effortlessly memorized as walking.

So Killua leaves Heaven's Arena. On his way out a clerk with sunny voice and haunted eyes informs him that this was his last chance: he will never be permitted to return and fight again. Killua shrugs, and takes his winnings.

They don't amount to much. Matches fought on the 200th floor and above are for prestige. The thrill of combat.

Killua doesn't want to take Association contracts. His stomach twists as the thought of running into old comrades. The number of unanswered calls on his cell phone is in the hundreds. 

There's no reason, he figures, that he can't work a normal job like anyone else. Stand behind a till and ring up purchases, serve food to tables. Killua's seen normal 15-year-olds do these things everywhere. After some trial, error, and web browsing, he discovers what a resume is and what should be on it. After further trial and error, that he needs to be less than forthcoming about the reality of his job experience. No one seems to want to hire a former assassin-turned-pro Hunter-turned prize fighter for the drive through window at Macked O'Nells. 

Killua learns many other things, too. That telling a well-to-do middle-aged woman that her double chin makes her look like she has gout when she complains about his latte will get him fired. That these jobs do not pay enough to live on, even if he works two or three of them and does not sleep. That he has no other marketable skills. That landlords will not rent to 15-year-olds with no credit and no work history. That if he shows up to work looking like he's spent the night outside in the park, that will get him fired, too.

Then he remembers that the Hunter license will get him free access to any public facility. Killua works nights, sleeps days in the basement of the library, and showers at the pool. He eats food stand snacks, and scraps from work.

When he loses teeth, Killua learns that he can't keep doing this.

There are other things he can do that pay better than this, that are closer to his skillset, that aren't the thing he swore he would never do. Security, tracking, espionage. His aura is sufficient to land him most contracts from those who know what to look for; for others, he reluctantly flashes his Hunter license when they balk at hiring a 16-year-old. He does well at these, conspicuously well: his contact for one corporate security job simply gives him a high-rise apartment to live in for the duration of his contract when he mentions that he has no fixed address. Casual criminals sent to break and enter to take photographs of cutting-edge intellectual property seem to expect the lasers and the cameras, but not the teenager who can feel their presence from 50 yards away and walks without sound.

Word-of-mouth lands Killua more and more contracts. The circles he now runs in begin to overlap with the underworld - with those who have contact with his family. When his employer becomes one of Milluki's targets, Killua keeps her one step ahead of his brother for weeks. Pads silently into the private room of the net cafe Milluki is using as an operations base and struggles to form words for the full minute it takes his brother to notice him. 

Milluki doesn't recognize him at all.

"I won't kill you," Killua rasps at last, "Tell them I won't kill you. But I will take one of your arms and both of your legs. You'll never work again."

" _Killua_?!"

Milluki's astonishment roots him to the spot. He doesn't follow Killua when he leaves.

When Killua finds out the hit has been given to his father and grandfather instead, he flees.

As far away as he can. Off the continent, on ships. To the fringes of the civilized world. There's work there for him, plenty of work, where warlords pay him blood money from the sale of illicit substances and the flesh of those with dreams of better lives, to his former employers. They learn that he'll fight anyone they want him to, take any object they want, terrify anyone they need, but he won't kill the helpless. Nor those who don't know it's coming. 

Killua becomes so skilled that this is soon perceived as an idiosyncrasy, not a flaw. There are always other contract killers for hire.

Corporate and mafia work taught him other uses for his abilities: that a jolt of the wrong current could black out a camera, or an entire security system, from a conduit all the way outside the building. Leorio's textbooks taught him how to render a person unconscious with a touch by disrupting the electrical signals inside their body; he mastered this and improved upon it for his espionage work: to disrupt the signals to instead convince them that they don't see or hear what is going on around them. 

Out here, he learns to use it to kill. Killua knows thousands of other ways, of course, but this is untraceable and indefensible. The voltage applied is so slight as to sever only the most crucial connections; so slight that even other nen users will sometimes focus their energy on softening other blows and allow Killua to make contact with their skin.

Out here, he learns to work without his family's connections. Without modern conveniences of any kind. Without friends, or allies. With nothing but his wits. His bare feet, and bare hands. He learns to treat his own wounds using the plants and herbs around him. Nature beyond the edges of the developed world is resplendent - stunning enough to take his breath away, at times.

Gon would have loved it.

Unbeknownst to him, Killua becomes a legend among the locals. They have names for him in the creoles that still exist here between their dying languages and the global standard: they translate to things like storm-stalker and death-shadow.

This attracts a different kind of attention. Killua hasn't checked qnet in years; doesn't know there's a bounty on his head, that several of the targets he's killed in open combat were freshly minted Hunters. He merely avoids most of those who come seeking it, or those who want to see if he exists at all. When he senses a group start to track him through the jungle that he can't shake no matter what he does, he finds a place in its heart where the shadows are thickest, at nightfall, and waits.

The voices are distantly familiar. Relaxed. Friendly, with one another.

Killua hops down from the trees to land silently between a blond man almost as tall as he is, and what appears to be a child. His fingers are millimeters from the backs of their necks. "Leave."

Phinks recognizes him first. Feitan stands there blinking, the memory just beyond his grasp. "Well I'll be damned. It's that kid from Yorknew. Didn't want to take the boat with your buddy?"

Killua doesn't quite leap away before he feels a papercut; Kalluto's nen. His mind starts to turn white at the edges.

On the path before him, the man whose nen Kurapika sealed away speaks: "We have you surrounded. Don't worry, there are two outcomes for you. The choice is yours. You join us, or we take your head bac--"

" _Brother_?!" comes Kalluto's voice from behind him startles everyone into inaction.

"Ah, shit, he's a Zoldyck. Boss, this changes things."

"The offer stands."

"Kil, what _happened_ to you?"

Killua hasn't moved. His own heartbeat sounds like thunder in his ears. He should say something. To Kalluto. He should--

"Is that other kid still with you? God, he's gotta be a beast by now too--"

Killua reacts faster than even the Troupe expects. Bolts right through their line in a blaze of light in the space between heartbeats; they are skilled enough that they could have pursued him, perhaps even killed him when he turned his back, but the surprise of his identity, and the uncertainty of what it means for Kalluto stays them long enough for his escape. 

Now, there is truly nowhere else for him to go. He is at the end of the world, and there is nowhere else to run. Nothing else for him to do. Save wait for someone to find him. Which he does, seated at a cliffside near the NGL, from which he does not rise.

"It's time to come home, Kil."

Illumi finds Killua first. Near death from dehydration, Killua can't protest.

Illumi keeps him that way for the rest of the trip back to Kukuroo Mountain. Once, Illumi tries to put another needle inside him; the static shock of Killua's electrified defenses nearly stops Illumi's heart on contact. Illumi doesn't try again.

His mother bursts into tears at the sight of him; Silva tilts Killua's bearded chin from side to side, and Killua's world spins at having to look _down_ at his father. He finds out from one of the butlers that next month is his nineteenth birthday.

Killua's feet dangle over the edge of his old bed. Still, he fits if he curls up on his side, and there is something comforting about the familiarity. So long as he eats the meals the butlers leave at his door, his family doesn't bother him in here. 

He sleeps for days. Dusts off his old toys and pushes them around idly. Flips through old books without reading the words; fights down nausea and snaps them shut when he sees the things he's done overlaid with the images. Keeps the blinds drawn, and the lights dim. Takes his JoyStation out of the box; discovers after a 12-hour Final Fiction binge that he feels a little better afterward. That while he plays it, he doesn't think about a single thing outside the game.

He completes his entire library in a few weeks. Does it again, then swipes Milluki's old games while his brother is out on a job. They're not to his tastes, but they're better than he thought he would be. Milluki storms into his room and demands them back; instead of a fight, Killua has the first long conversation of his life with his second older brother, comparing the battle system and themes of Final Fiction to Last Phantasia. 

For his birthday, Milluki calls Killua a filthy console peasant, gives him a JoyStation 3, and a copy of the latest Valor's Call: Modern Hunter. 

They play it together, sometimes. Sometimes Killua plays with Canary. Milluki is delighted that there is something, at last, at which is better than his little brother.

The truce doesn't last. Milluki complains that he has to work, and Killua doesn't. The air is so charged with static that their hair stands on end when Killua's parents broach the topic of contracts with him. A section of Modern Hunter 2 takes place in East Gorteau, and Milluki gloats when Killua freezes up. Mocks him when his breaths grow erratic during the final charge to the top of the presidential palace with flares and seems to be seeing something other than what's on the screen in front of him. Milluki flicks his face and tells him to snap out of it.

Killua breaks Milluki's nose with his fist.

Milluki tells their parents; Kikyou calls him a poor dear and Silva calls him an idiot. Milluki stops visiting Killua and Killua stops leaving his room.

Killua has no idea how long passes before Zeno shows up in the middle of the night, tells him that he is coming with him; that it is not a contract, nor is it a choice. 

They head tree by tree to the top of the mountain, where his grandfather informs Killua that it is time to resume his training. Nothing to do with his old trade: simply his body and his nen. Killua agrees - reluctantly, at first, then wholeheartedly when he discovers how much better he feels after a day of working himself to exhaustion. Killua runs to the city and back in half a day. He whittles this down to an hour; to half an hour; to ten minutes. He stops running - learns to let the current itself carry him. Stops relying on power sources to recharge; learns to draw electricity from the air itself. 

Zeno spars with him. Just like Killua had seen him spar with his father when he was a child, awestruck that anyone could defend themselves from his dragon attacks. 

Killua is at his throat before he can summon a single one. 

Zeno scoffs and blasts him halfway down the mountain with his aura before Killua can touch him. "Don't toy with me, son. The next time I see your attack coming I'll break your hands."

Killua spends the next several months trying to land that hit. Forages for his own food. Sleeps on the ground, with one eye open. Zeno does break his hands. Then his feet, when Killua tries again. Killua splints them and keeps going.

Killua and Zeno return from training a year later. Silva awaits Zeno's report; to see if, as he suspects, Killua has been irreparably damaged by his time spent apart from the family. If so he needs his father's advice: Silva will never pass his authority on to Illumi, and Kalluto won't want to return - can Milluki be salvaged? Would it be better to force the youngest brother to come home, too? What can be done about Killua?

Nothing, Zeno tells him. There is nothing Silva can do about Killua. Killua is not a one-in-a-generation talent after all. 

Killua is a once-in-a-hundred-generations talent.

Killua, Zeno tells him, has learned to use the cloud of electricity that surrounds all living things and extends well beyond their bodies. He can manipulate their actions, and their senses, from yards away. He can pass through crowd without ever being seen, not because his nen turns him invisible, but because no one around him will be capable of recognizing that they saw him. He can kill without ever touching his target. Even a powerful nen-user would fall prey the moment they let their guard down. This had been Killua's solution to Zeno's challenge.

"The boy won't kill in cold blood, but he'll fight like the devil himself." Zeno's own solution is simple: "Bring him with us."

And so Silva tells Killua that it is time to start earning his keep. There are plenty of opportunities: contracts that Silva and Zeno usually handle together, involving highly trained combatants. Who know they are coming. As they did against the Phantom Troupe, and with the late Chairman. For the Hunter Association, for the mafia, for the militaries of the V6. They give Killua their own nicknames: Ghost, for his pale skin and silver hair. Grim Reaper, for the way he kills without a cause or a trace.

Rarely, Killua returns home from a job without self-loathing. Terrorists seize a subway car full of passengers and set charges to go off simultaneously the moment anyone crosses the plane of any entrance to the tunnel.

Killua short-circuits all of the detonators and is down the stairs and onto the platform in the time between the master controller going dark and the hostage takers to squeeze the triggers of the weapons they carry. No one else alive could have pulled it off without collateral damage.

Eventually, Killua and Silva have a conversation about his future. Killua _will_ succeed him as the head of the family. Silva respects his resolve: if Killua wishes to stick to his chosen principles, he may. He will, however, have to organize those contracts he will not take himself among the rest of the Zoldycks. If Killua finds this too unpalatable, he should find a spouse who will do it for him. He is more than old enough to marry. It need not, Silva adds after a pause, be a woman. Butlers have been used as surrogates many times. 

Killua shakes his head. He doesn't want this.

"What do you want, then?"

At length, Killua responds: "Alluka."

"As the head of the family you can do whatever you wish with him."

To the astonishment of every Zoldyck, and the joy of most, Killua agrees to it. Silva will retire at 60, the day Killua turns 24. Provided he can accomplish the final task that Silva asks of him.

Killua travels to Meteor City.

The Troupe are visiting home. They've taken the Anthill as their base; no one has objected. 

Shizuku and Nobunaga are armwrestling. Bono, Phinks, and Machi are playing cards. Feitan and Kalluto are engaged in a private conversation ten feet apart from the others, while Chrollo flips through the pages of his book.

Killua appears in the midst of them to the crackle of static. They all felt his arrival with en; between the moment they sensed him and the moment he arrived, none of them had time to react.

"Go fish," says Machi.

"Hey Kil," says Kalluto, "I heard you went home."

The dim light conceals Killua's expression. "And you're living with murderers and thieves in a pile of garbage."

"We prefer the term bandits," says Shizuku.

"You butchered Kurapika's entire clan down to a man. Children first."

"Who?" Feitan asks.

"Red-Eyes," says Chrollo.

Feitan touches his chin. "Oh yeah. That took _days_."

"You've each slaughtered dozens of people over nothing more than possessions. Goods for sale."

"What are you calling us?" aska Nobunaga, as irritated as he is amused. "Savages?"

"Amateurs." Killua's white teeth break the plane of light. "I'd killed dozens by the time I was ten. I made more money for it, too."

"Looks like the new head of the Zoldyck clan needs a lesson in manners," says Phinks, and draws another card, "Remember how high and mighty his dad was before we put him in his place, boss?" 

"He survived."

"Out of professional courtesy," says Chrollo, and flips another page. "Our paths are easier if we don't work at cross-purposes.”

"Don't put me on your level. We're honorable professionals. I can trace my ancestry for a thousand years of the greatest assassins the world has ever known. There's a fundamental difference between us that can never be overcome."

"Which is?" Nobunaga asks, thumb on his hilt.

"When we take money to kill children, we pay taxes on it."

Nobunaga spits; Feitan chuckles; Shizuku laughs; Phinks grins; even Machi rolls her eyes. Chrollo holds up a hand: "Thank you for the stand-up comedy routine. But you didn't come all this way for that. Why are you here?"

"Kalluto." Killua extends a hand. "I'm taking my brother back."

"No," says Kalluto.

"You heard him," says Chrollo, "Leave."

"That wasn't a request."

"Mine wasn't either."

Kalluto's grip tightens around Feitan's arm. "Please don't kill him. Everyone. Kil's... Kil's the only brother I've got who isn't a complete bastard. The family's put him up to this."

"It's been decided. You've had enough time on your own."

"That's bullshit. Nobody ever made _you_ come back."

"You're not doing anything of value here."

"What were _you_ doing that was so important? Playing video games for the Hunter Association? Playing soldier in East Gorteau? Punching nen-less nobodies in Heaven's Arena for nickels? Growing a beard and finding yourself out in the woods?"

Killua's response is expressionless: "I left to make friends."

Kalluto's isn't: "These _are_ my friends!"

"Kalluto, this is a pack of wolves. You're their cub. You're fresh meat to replace the ones who get too long in the tooth to hunt." 

"They're my _friends_ ," Kalluto growls, and stands. "I thought you of all people would understand that." He takes out his fan.

"You'll lose this fight, Kalluto," Chrollo cautions.

"All of you will lose this fight," Killua whispers.

"Kil, are you cry--"

A surge of current rises from the floor: it is entirely lethal, but the Troupe leaps clear, even if they have to drag their comrades along with them. At its center, Killua glows blinding blue-white. He appears to blur into his own aura, and nen-wrought lightning arcs out at unthinkable speed at random targets. Between them, with no time to adjust, the brightness leaves the room in total darkness. And in that darkness Killua moves. 

When Nobunaga at last draws Killua into the range of his blade and draws his blood, Bono, Franklin, and Shizuku lay unconscious for no reason the Troupe can discern. Killua has survived entering Nobunaga's trap for no reason they can discern, either. The slice that should have taken Killua's head off is a mere cut between his brows. Blood drips between his eyes; he waits in a crouch; the air snaps and crackles.

"Incredible," says Chrollo.

" _Awesome_ ," says Feitan. "He mine."

"I drew first blood, he's mine," says Nobunaga.

"You mean you had your chance," says Phinks, "My turn."

Coins fly out of pockets and into hands. Machi removes the wounded members to safety.

"Don't mock me," says Killua, and leaps straight for Chrollo.

Chrollo compensates for Killua's speed the only way anyone possibly could: he slows time. This will last ten seconds. The only way he could use that ability itself in time is to see it coming, which he did thanks to the foreknowledge wrest from a certain Prince of Kakin. Even so, it is a near thing: Killua is frozen in mid-air so close to Chrollo that his nen touches the electricity around him. Chrollo can see the forked tendrils of white-blue move toward him at a crawl. To his surprise, these stay with Chrollo when he moves out of the way.

Chrollo knows he can't touch Killua, even in this state. Not directly. Killua's entire body and a radius around it are electrified. 

First, he touches Nobunaga's blade. The current inching toward Chrollo reverses directions; follows the path of least resistance. Second, he tells Phinks to take Nobunaga - who will soon be unconscious - to safety. Phinks will hear the words as soon as time begins to move again. Third, he draws Feitan's cane sword and plunges it into Feitan's own shoulder before withdrawing it. That should be enough damage. Feitan will be the only one who has a prayer of being fast enough for this.

Last, Chrollo grabs Kalluto and runs.

If Feitan hesitates, or if Killua does not pause to take in the changes in his surroundings, this will fail. When an explosion of heat rattles the hill behind him down to its foundations, he knows it has succeeded.

As soon as he is able to move, Kalluto turns and runs back to them.

Killua and Feitan kneel a hundred feet apart, coughing up smoke. Feitan knew that he didn't have time to conjure his own protection, not completely, before Killua would be out of range. Kalluto goes to him first; neither Feitan nor Killua can get back to their feet.

Chrollo stands before Killua. Tells him that if he gives him his ability, Chrollo will let him leave here alive.

Killua shakes his head.

"Don't!" Kalluto stays Chrollo's hand. "Our fucking family put him up to this! _KILLUA_. Since when are you - since when - how much are they paying you to kill my _friends_?!"

"That's not why," states Chrollo. "He could have taken out half of us before we knew he was here."

"Then _why_. _WHY_?! Why follow us here?!"

"Anywhere else would have been much more advantageous to his skillset. He chose this place because there was no chance of injuring bystanders."

Kalluto comes to Killua's side at last. Seizes him by the shoulders, and shakes him viciously. Killua lets himself be shaken. " _Why_ , Kil...?"

"Kalluto. Go and be with your brother for a little while."

"We come get you," Feitan adds. 

"Why...?"

"Just do it."

"I won't stay," Kalluto warns Killua.

"That's alright." Killua wraps his arms around his brother tightly.

The two Zoldycks take their time returning to the estate. Killua is badly injured, and Kalluto is in no hurry to come home. Killua asks about his friends, and the things they've done together. The things they've seen together. The jokes they've told. Killua takes him to see things he hasn't seen yet, and Kalluto does the same. Over drinks, Kalluto confesses that he's fallen for the man Killua thought was a child at first, who is now greying at the temples. Killua wishes the two of them well. Kalluto asks if Killua has ever been in love, and Killua says yes. 

"Will they really come for you?" asks Killua, on the drive up to the mountain. "Your friends."

"Yes," Kalluto replies without hesitation, "The same as yours did."

Killua smiles.

Immediately after the ceremony to take leadership of the clan, Killua frees Alluka from her confinement. Trapped inside a room for over a decade, she is tall but frail as bone. They embrace, and Killua carries her up to the hall. He summons his family. 

First, he tells them about the commands. That they only work for him. He demonstrates by commanding Nanika to heal him. 

Then he commands her to never grant wishes again.

At Killua's full speed, both seem to vanish into nothingness.

They travel for a time, until Alluka is stronger. At her side, Killua feels some contentment, even though the food they eat has no taste and the things they see have no bright colours and haven't for many years.

He takes her to Whale Island. Introduces her to Mito, who now lives alone. This is the perfect place for Alluka adapt to the outside world, until she decides what she wants to do with the rest of her life. The possibilities are endless, Killua tells her, and vast and beautiful and stark and tragic and complex. Or she could choose to live a peaceful life here, as Mito has. The two get along well, and Mito readily agrees to care for her until she decides.

His last night on Whale Island, Killua takes the same route he did with Gon all those years ago. 

The stars shine brilliantly so far from civilization, and Killua is just as awestruck as he was that night. The foxbear has cubs of its own now, and Killua, as immaterial as any shadow, watches them play. The branches that were so challenging to leap between are nothing to him now, but it is just as fun to race to the top.

Over the pond, in Gon's fishing blind, the leaves of Gon's fishing cap have long since decayed and been blown away by the wind. A rain-weathered makeshift support pole remains, as do long reams of sturdy but snapped line caught in the branches.

Without knowing about nen, without knowing Gon's natural talents as an Enhancer, it must have seemed impossible for a small child to land a several-hundred-pound fish, let alone raise it from the water. Killua imagines Gon's determination, his certainty, his triumph when he finally caught the Lord of the Swamp, just in time for the Hunter Exam. At the same age as his father, to walk in his father's footsteps.

"I met him for you," Killua says to the night, "I'll tell you about him. Wasn't much to see, but - it's the journey that matters. Right?"

The line was strong enough to resist a tonne of force or more when it was made, but it's old now. It breaks when Killua's neck does. 

Killua's body never rises to the surface. No one ever finds out what's happened to him; as far as they know, he ran away from home and spent the rest of his life on an adventure.


	5. Regret x and x Hope

Killua does not arrive too early, nor too late. He stands by the boy he loves in his darkest hour, but does not interrupt the processing of Gon's grief nor his anger until they reach their nadir. He pushes Gon clear of certain death at Pitou's hands, yet allows him the wound that feels like redemption.

Through Gon's suffering Killua finds the courage to confront his father; to rescue his sister; to stand up to Illumi and walk away from his brother's challenge. 

He swears the other Hunters to secrecy; Gon will never know what Killua spared him from, will never know what Killua had to go through to do it, will never know that this was done by his hand at all until Killua is ready for him to know.

Gon is as bright and lively as ever. He leaps into Leorio's arms; he beams at Alluka, he gasps in awe at the World Tree, he grovels with innocent chagrin over the words he spoke to Killua in anger.

But Killua can't shake the things he's seen. The image of Gon's grown face behind his eyelids, of his tear-stained rage. He sits bolt upright in the night to the lingering sensation of Gon's parchment-thin, withered flesh stretched flimsily over bone. Even now it aches to hear Gon's voice; his gut turns to ice every time it drops in timbre.

Killua needs time.

Still, the pain when they part ways treads the line of unbearable. When Killua says that if they don't part here, they never will, these are not empty words. He has no idea what he'll do or say if Gon asks him not to leave, or if he asks to follow Killua and Alluka on their journey. The decision to retreat at the base of the World Tree is strategic: it minimizes the likelihood that Gon will stray from his goal. Of course, Gon could also ask them to wait for him.

Gon asks for none of these things.

They do part, backs turned, and aside from a trembling lower lip Killua maintains his composure all the way to the train station.

Alluka's cheerful presence soothes. Her eagerness to see new things - to her, all things are new - to hear and touch and experience reminds him of Gon bouncing from stall to stall in the marketplace, untainted. If she resents him for leaving her alone she does not ever say. He can always answer the questions she asks, and her squeal of joy whenever he buys her something she likes, or takes her somewhere she wants to go, makes the days pass easy.

At night Killua's last thoughts before sleep are troubled ones, wondering why he can't hear Gon's steady breaths. Can't hear him toss and turn and mumble. Can't feel his body heat through a shared blanket; can't smell him, nor tiptoe off to wash his clothes, because Gon hasn't for two weeks and only owns one set and if he doesn't, Killua is going to die. They traveled together for years.

Out of caution, Killua shares a room with Alluka. She and Gon smell and sound nothing alike. Alluka keeps him up at night chatting about their day's travels; Gon used to whisper just as excitedly but slept like a stone.

When Killua touches himself, during rare moments alone, he thinks about nothing at all to stave off tears.

Texts and emails keep Gon at a safe distance. Through them Killua's worst fears are laid to rest: Gon has returned to Whale Island. His family is well. He had fun with Ging; Ging is leaving on a trip that may take years. Gon isn't going with him. Gon is doing remedial correspondence classes. Gon saw a boat with a huge fish on it. It was even bigger than the Lord of the Swamp. It was blue and scaly. The captain let him touch it. Being a fisherman would be fun, wouldn't it, Killua?

[yep. i think u'd like it]

It's when Gon calls him, in spite of his instructions to the contrary, that Killua's heart hammers in his throat. His thumb hovers over the green button too long the first time; Gon calls him right back again.

Within minutes Killua feels foolish. Gon sounds thrilled to hear from him, and spends the better part of an hour complaining about his math homework. He begs for Killua's help with trigonometry; unexpectedly, Killua chuckles, and calls him an idiot, just like he used to. 

Finally, Gon asks about Killua's travels. Killua offers sparse details; he doesn't want to rub it in. He does tell Gon how nice it is to travel with his sister, how sweet she is, how glad he is to get to spend time with her. 

"Huh," Gon muses, on the other end, "I wish I had a sister. Wish I had a brother more, though."

Killua makes a face. "Trust me, no you don't." 

"Illumi is a jerk," Gon agrees, "But not all brothers, right?"

"Pretty much all brothers. Milluki is a gross lardass and Kalluto is a momm--"

"Killu~a," Gon interrupts, "Why didn't you ever tell me about her?"

Killua sighs. Pinches the bridge of his nose. It's alright, Gon can know. It's harmless. It's over. "Illumi. Stuck something inside my head. It made me… think less about her than I should." He doesn't add that it made him scared, or reluctant to fight, or anything else. Gon doesn't need to know these things. Gon admires Killua's caution. Or so he said, once.

"But you remember her now?"

"Yeah. I pulled it out." Unconsciously, Killua scratches his forehead.

"Hmm," says Gon, and falls silent.

"I did," adds Killua, to try to fill the space. "I didn't know it was there. Took me a while to figure it out, you know?"

"When did you figure it out?"

"Er," Killua stalls, "When you and Palm, uh, went out. That day." Gon doesn't need to know why, or what happened, and he especially doesn't need to know that it was done to protect him. "Finally got some time alone, I guess."

"You said she can do anything you want? She can consume nen? Break contracts?"

"Yeah, she can." Killua’s heart is racing and he doesn’t know why.

"Why didn't you tell me about her, Killua?"

Killua blinks. "We were about to fight the Ants? I, it, wasn't relevant? Didn't have anything to do with what was going on?"

"Ah."

No, Killua does know. One sentence too late, he does. Gon's voice drags along its lower reaches, each word slow and roughly heaved past his throat, and all Killua can see are Gon’s shoulders, pinched and shaking, from behind.

"Why didn't you tell me she could heal Kite."

"I don't think she _can_ bring back the dead--"

"I didn't know he was dead. Did you?"

"No. Gon, no.” Killua's hands are trembling. “I didn’t. We didn’t have time to get her. We had the mission.”

"Why didn't you tell me."

Killua doesn't have the words to tell him that he never dreamed of risking Alluka's safety for anyone other than Gon. That he would have been unwilling to stand before his father to ask for help for a stranger. That his father would have denied it. That Killua _believed_ in Gon, wanted to believe in him, that this would all be okay in the end. That they would save Kite and go home together. That if worst came to worst, no matter what the consequences, Killua could help Gon. That in the end he could do nothing. That by the time he realized that Kite’s salvation wasn’t what this was about at all, that this was suicide for both of them, it was too late. 

At last, all Killua can say is: “Didn’t think of it.”

On the other end there is a deep exhalation, as if Gon had released a breath he was holding, that ends in a sheepish laugh. “It’s fine, Killua. It wasn’t your problem.”

They don’t talk much after that.

There are sporadic texts and pictures of animals Gon might like. Sometimes Killua regrets sending them; sometimes, he wonders if he sends them to find out whether or not Gon will still reply. Three months after their last phone call Gon sends a one-word text at 2:47 AM that reads:

[sorry]

And nothing more.

Killua doesn’t know what to say to that. Gon apologized for the last time, too, and it had felt just as hollow. Two days later, Killua responds with a picture of Alluka’s candy cane sundae, and Gon responds [yum].

It’s so sweet that Gon would have hated it. 

Six months after that, Gon tells him that he dropped his correspondence classes. He doesn’t tell Killua why, and Killua doesn’t ask. A month later Gon tells Killua that he’s been hired as a deck hand aboard a ship headed for the open ocean. Killua types and deletes a message that would have asked Gon why he wasn’t taking Association contracts.

Gon likes fish. Gon likes the sea. Gon’s probably having the time of his life.

Killua does his best to put the past out of his mind. He is no longer naive enough to believe that his family will let him abscond with Alluka forever; that Killua broke his promise to his father would be reason enough to bring both of them home. He needs to think about the future. He needs to prepare. He needs to be ready.

Between this and the fact that it is difficult for Killua himself to take contracts now that he cannot leave Alluka's side - and that without contracts it is difficult to make enough jenny to survive, let alone travel, without any other source of employment - when Killua does not hear back from Gon for several days, he thinks nothing of it.

A week passes with no reply. Killua sends a picture of a spotted dog whose infected paw Nanika healed of her own volition.

Nothing.

One week turns into several. At one month Killua musters the courage to type:

[u ok?]

Which goes unseen and unanswered. 

At two months Killua sits up late at night and stares at his phone screen while Alluka dozes beside him. Taps the button on the side over and over; in an hour and a half he makes it past the lockscreen and pads to the bathroom. Sits on the edge of the tub. Drags his unsteady thumb across the call button.

It goes straight to voicemail.

Killua clears his throat. "Hey, Gon. You okay?" he says, which immediately he regrets. Of course Gon is okay. Gon is just busy. Or still mad at him. Or bored of small talk. No, no. Killua can't imagine Gon ghosting anyone. Gon's busy or he's angry. "Hah, I mean, of course you are, but. Like."

Killua should explain how complicated things are with Alluka. How dangerous his family perceives her to be, how Illumi hasn't given up their pursuit, how he didn't want to drag Gon - or Kite - into it unless he absolutely had to. How this will be the rest of his life, now. On the run from his fucked up family who have done and will do things to him and his sister that Killua wouldn't describe to Gon if a gun was held to his head. That Gon should move on to better things if he hasn't already.

Killua should explain how deeply Gon's words cut and how drained he felt after it was all finished. He should explain that he needed this time and this distance.

"Like... could you call me back?"

Killua stays up all night with the ringer on.

Gon does not call.

A week later Killua tries again. He gets the voicemail again. "Call me back, okay?" he asks.

"Gon, call me back," Killua says, the next time.

"Call me _back_ ," Killua snaps, the time after that. 

Killua's already made up his mind: he's not going to plead. If Gon wants to be stubborn, so what. Gon was the one being an asshole. 'Nothing to do with him', 'not his problem' - just whose fault was it they were in East Gorteau in the first place, huh? Who asked Killua to be the voice of reason, then got mad when Killua tried to talk him down? If it had nothing to do with Killua, why would Killua even. Be. There. 

Gon is an overbearing jerk and a hypocrite with a bad temper and no self-control who never listens and Killua can't believe he ever had a crush on him.

When twelve weeks have passed Killua starts calling their friends. They haven't heard from Gon either.

Whale Island phone numbers aren't listed online. They aren't in any mainland phone books. Killua has to call the operator and be patched through to a directory. 

Mito hasn't heard from Gon since his last letter four months ago. He does not call her and she does not have his cell phone number.

That night, Killua wakes from a dream of Gon's tears in profile. He hasn't had this nightmare in months.

_It doesn't hurt._

Killua scrubs his own hands down his face. He wonders, not for the first time, if he had the right to interfere with the choice that Gon made then.

...Wait, what choice was that?

Alluka is still asleep. Killua has hours to himself until morning. In this time, he finds himself chewing over thoughts he has ground with his teeth to dust. Distance unclounds the haze of emotions, and makes clear those things Killua does not wish to see.

Gon’s rage and his despair still frighten Killua. 

But in the end, no matter how many times Killua turns what he saw over in his mind, he cannot deny the merciless logic to it.

By himself, Gon had no hope of victory in a fair fight against Pitou. They'd known that before the invasion. By himself, Gon's choices were what he had done, or death. And had he chosen the latter, Pitou could have returned to the palace and killed them all. By then half the team was gone, and she had never been sickened or weakened by the Rose.

Gon entered into that unwinnable fight in the first place because he could see no other way to save his friend. 

He would have done the same for Killua.

Even if, in the blackest part of his heart, he knew that Killua was already dead.

No, that wasn't it. Gon entered into that unwinnable fight because Kite's fate was his fault. Their fault. Killua had borne witness to the inexorable march to that inevitable conclusion for months. There was nothing Killua could do - no, all he could do was damage control. Mitigate its worst excesses. Face Pitou with him and hope for an opening. Even if that meant dying together.

Because by himself, Gon had no hope.

Yet in the end, Gon was alone.

Killua wraps his arms around his blanket-wrapped knees.

For all they'd told the adults the decision was tactical, both he and Gon had known it wasn't. Palm would have been perfectly capable of guarding Komugi. With Palm watching over Gon from a distance, holding Gon alone hostage against the rest of them would have been - and ultimately was - as effective as holding Gon or Killua hostage against the other. All their separation accomplished was to make the circumstances that much more dire if holding Komugi captive lost its efficacy - which it did. 

Were they to separate, the tactical decision would have been to send Killua with Pitou. If the situation devolved, only he - with Godspeed - stood a chance of escaping alive. If the situation devolved on the other side, only Gon would truly have hurt Komugi. For the rest of them it was a bluff the Ants could call at any time - which they did.

No, Gon went to Peijing alone for the same reason he sat with Pitou and Komugi alone in the tower. 

Because Killua left him there.

There is no needle Killua can pluck from his head to make what he feels for Gon less overwhelming.

And so overwhelmed, he'd done exactly as Bisky predicted: left Gon to die.

[gon please talk to me]

The message is marked as read.

Killua's heart hammers for every pulse of the ellipse that shows that a reply is being composed.

[who's this?]

[who do you think]

[new phone sorry lost my contacts]

After a slight pause the typing continues.

[but it sounds like killua haha]

Killua jabs the call icon harder than he means to. The call connects in half a second. The voice on the other end is ecstatic.

" _Killu_ \--"

Killua cuts him off with a growl that is louder than he means it to be, too. Alluka shifts. "You didn't have my number saved somewhere, dumbass?!"

"Sure I did! On my phone."

"How hard is it to remember seven digits?!"

"It's ten though."

"One of them is an _area code_." Belatedly, it occurs to Killua that if Gon bought his first cell phone in Yorknew he probably doesn't have any area codes memorized. He groans: Whale Island strikes again. "Why didn't you look me up on qNet?"

"Killua," Gon replies patiently, "There's no internet on a fishing boat."

There was no cell signal for most of the voyage, either, and during the same storm that blew them off course and swamped the engine Gon lost his phone overboard. They drifted for days before the Yorbian coast guard got to them and towed their vessel back to the nearest harbour. Which is surrounded by desert right next to the ocean with cool rock formations like Gon has never seen before. Gon didn't know there could be mountains in the desert and they're very high but they have no snow and he wants to see what's at the top of them and there's a bazaar with lizards for sale that look just like Meleoron and people who eat fire and-

"Gon." Killua cuts him off, again. "Glad you're okay."

"Aw, haha." Another deep breath. Another sheepish chuckle. "Were you worried about me?"

Killua could tell him no. He could protest. He could continue to berate him, in jest, about being irresponsible - invent something unrelated to tell him about. A question to ask him. Something to do with someone else. Killua wants to.

Instead, he says, "Yes."

There is a long pause on the other end. Killua fills it. "Do you have a sec? To talk."

"Sure," Gon replies, and neither of them speak or breathe while Killua takes the call out to the balcony.

Killua stares out at the moonlit water. He imagines Gon doing the same. He grips the railing. "I'm sorry," he says.

"For what?" Gon asks. He sounds surprised.

"I shouldn't have left you alone," says Killua.

Killua can hear Gon open his mouth, and close it. Can hear him inhale and exhale. Can hear the soft sound he makes in the back of his throat before he clears it to speak. 

"I shouldn't have pushed you away," says Gon. 

Killua doesn't realize he's crying until Gon asks him if he's okay.

Yes, Killua's fine. Just broke, he admits, against his better judgement, as sheepishly as Gon had admitted he'd lost Killua's phone number. His family's cut him off. For good this time. It's hard to take contracts without leaving Alluka's side - at least, contracts that pay well - and he can't do that without risking her safety. She wasn't given permission to leave. The family will want her back. Illumi will want her back. And she knows nothing about the outside world.

Gon had no idea.

Gon is in the same boat, sort of. Or rather, lack thereof. The one that hired him needs a total refit. He's been released from his contract; he has his share of what catch they did manage to take in before the storm hit and they had to cut the lines to the nets. It's not even enough to get him home.

Killua can no longer bite back the obvious: "Why are you fishing in the first place?"

"You said you thought I'd like it!" Gon replies, as if that answers anything, "Mito said if I wanted to drop out of school, I had to work."

And on Whale Island, for young men, exactly one industry is hiring. It's better than sitting around the house. It's better than cleaning fish or mending nets or ship repair, though Gon doesn't have the skills for the latter even if he wanted to. Most sons learn that from their fathers. 

Besides, he gets to travel the world. See places even Hunters don't see. Gon's already been hired onto a new ship. It's heading north to the Sea of Aksala for the autumn run on emperor crabs. They'll be in season then. Did Killua know they sell for 14,000 jenny a pound at market? It's incredible. They're delicacies in Padokea. Gon will be making five times what mainland silverling fishermen make. 

Killua knows they're delicacies. He's eaten them many times. He didn't know what they cost. It doesn't sound like very much, that sounds like a normal dinner out, but-

"That's why you're broke, Killua," Gon chides him, and Killua regrets telling him that already.

"I'm _fine_. I'm not gonna be for long. I've already figured it out."

"Oh yeah?"

" _Yeah_. I'm going back to Heaven's Arena. Still got one more shot there before they kick me out." 

"They don't pay you above the 200th floor, though." Gon sounds unconvinced. 

"That's why I'm not gonna make it past the 199th." Killua grins. "All I need to do is throw a few fights. Strategically."

If Killua does it right he can ride between the 175th and 199th for months, make fat stacks of jenny, and be set for years. 

"Not if you keep eating chocolate robots and emperor crab."

"Do you get the nagging from Mito, or is this what Ging's like when you get to know him?" Killua sighs through his nose.

"Mito’s allowed to nag. It's her house. She tells people what to do. What are you going to do about your sister? It's not safe in the stands."

This is the brilliant part, Killua explains: Alluka will 'fight' with him. Team fights are even more lucrative than one-on-one. She won't do anything, of course. But it won't be dangerous at all, because nobody below the 200th floor's got nen. Killua beat 1200-some-odd nenless Hunter candidates single-handed. Killua has zero chance of losing to two. If anybody asks about it, she'll be his master or his strategist or moral support mascot, who cares, he'll cook up some bullshit. Out in the open, surrounded by thousands of people barred from interfering, on live television, will be the safest place in the world.

"Did you watch Chrollo versus Hisoka?" Gon sounds unconvinced again.

"That was a _floor master_ fight. Not some random nobodies. Besides, Wing and Zushi are there. I heard Bisky is too. I've got backup if I need it." Not that Killua would ever drag them into this mess. None of them would stand a chance against Illumi, let alone his father.

Well, maybe Bisky would. Killua would rather swear off chocolate robots forever than ask for her help, though.

"Hmm," Gon contemplates, as if he has any say in the matter anymore, "Okay. If you think so."

“Yeah, I do,” Killua asserts, and silence falls between them once again.

This silence is dangerous, and counted in seconds. Killua has known many silences like these: every pulse of his measured heartbeat draws him away from one certainty toward another. This time, however, the two sides that reflect from the knife are not life and death, nor are they success or failure. He and Gon have fallen into an old, familiar pattern. If Killua responds too quickly, nothing changes. Too slowly, nothing begins. 

Killua is the one who speaks, because Killua has been able to tread on edges that would cut others for as long as he has known his own name, and this is why his family will never let him go. “The Sea of Aksala’s pretty close to Heaven’s Arena, yeah?”

Killua knows exactly where it is.

“Yup. We’ll put in there when the season’s over.”

And so does Gon.

“That’s, like, what - a couple months from now?” Killua wonders if Gon can hear his smile.

Because he can hear Gon’s. “Four or five. Depends on the weather.”  
“Bet you in five months I’ve got my neck chop game down and me and Alluka are raking in the jenny.”

“Bet you you’re still broke and I have to buy both of you dinner.”

“Whatever, I’ll take you to the most expensive restaurant in town.”

“Sure, it’s a date.”

“It is _not_ a date--”

“What date, though, hm.”

January 1st. They’ll meet again January 1st at Heaven’s Arena. It’s a promise. Him and Gon, just like old times, only Alluka will be there, and Wing and Zushi will act as a buffer if they need to be, too. Killua will take him out to dinner and then they’ll spar, just like they used to, just to see how far they’ve come.

And then they’ll talk, really _talk_. Just like they should have, a long time ago.

Because Killua will do it right this time. Both feet planted firmly on the ground. Face-to-face. Things will be different, this time - would have been different, if he hadn’t run away. If he’d arrived in Peijing sooner, or stayed at Gon’s side, or let Gon decide his own fate. How much better things could have been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about how long this took me, everyone! But I wanted to wait until the Gon-counterpart fic to this was finished so I could post them together, and that one ended up running longer than expected, plus everything else that's happened this year. Chapter 5 of the Gon side will take place in the same universe as this one, unlike the rest of the installments in this series. It'll go up in a few days - this one's meant to be read first. (EDIT: It's now up: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23159050/chapters/69743091).
> 
> Merry Christmas, everyone! Thanks for reading!


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